Manual Production

Living off the grid, as we do, gives you a fine sense of power use. When you can use people power effectively you tend to forgo modern machinery with motors.
Once in a while you can be lucky enough to find a perfect piece of equipment from the past that was developed to do the job you need. That is the case with our paper cutter.

This is our guillotine. 100 years old when we bought it, an antique print shop manual paper cutter. That's one big chunk of cast iron!

You probably already know we use environmentally friendly Thai Unryu paper made from Mulberry trees to wrap our soaps.
These fine handcrafted art papers come in large sheets that need to be cut into smaller size to wrap the individual bars of soap.

Cutting the sheets individually is not an option, a print shop style paper cutter, or guillotine, cuts a large stack of paper all at one time. Most modern guillotines are powered by hydraulic motors. This is one of the original manual ones.
You can still buy manual bulk paper cutters, but they are not as beautiful a piece of machinery as this!

You put a stack of paper on the table after adjusting a stop to the proper length, using the wheel you see in front, then turn the wheel on top to clamp it down.
The blade (reflecting the paper) comes down by pulling/pushing a long handle activating a lever. Then it is held back by a counterweight. Primitive machinery, but very effective. 

After cutting into strips the proper width, you readjust the stop and cut into rectangles.
Below you can see the stop on the back of the cutter.

Here you can see the size of the original sheets of Unryu mulberry paper, a cut strip, and the finished size.



On the right is the cut paper for our bath bars, with smaller paper for mini soaps in front.

Below is paper, and soap waiting to be wrapped.
We wrap all the soaps by hand as well.
 Just a peek into how we do things here at Simmons Natural Bodycare.